Give-and-take

Want To Put Your Two-cents In? Here's Another Day Of Editorial Feedback

December 15, 2008

Without feedback from readers, this opinion page would be a lot less interesting, and a lot less of the community forum we know it should be.

That's why we occasionally devote this space, where staff editorials normally run, to the local opinion marketplace we call editorial feedback. It's a topical give-and-take between the Editorial Board and the readers.

We're committed to making this page a meeting place for all sorts of ideas, from a broad spectrum of voices.

We don't expect everybody to agree (and the reactions and responses make that clear). And we know we don't have all the answers.

Above all, we hope everybody's willing to be part of the discussion.

So thanks to the writers in today's collection.

Please join in.

BAD NEIGHBORS

Your editorial "Gowns in town," referencing the number of students allowed to live in one house in Williamsburg, could be very much true for Newport News. We live in a community close to CNU, where college students are currently renting houses. Even though the city code allows only three unrelated people in a single-family dwelling, that is almost certainly not adhered to, by either students or landlords. You can always tell where students are living by the number of cars parked on the streets in front of houses, by vehicles parked in yards, by bicycles strewn all over front yards, by beer cans, bottles, trash in the yards of the students and the neighbors and in the curbing. In general, the entire look of a house inhabited by students is one of neglect and unkemptness - a real detriment to the look of a neighborhood.

As to your comment about a number being a number, and why is a family with four children any different than four unrelated, young adults living in one house, my answer would be that in a family there are adults who are responsible heads of the household. In a rental house full of college students there is no responsible adult. Indeed there is partying, underage drinking, red neon lights in the windows, kids coming and going at all hours, urinating in the front yard and on and on and on. I would like to suggest that the city of Newport News find a way to enforce the code on the number of students living in one house, though I do understand how difficult that must be. I would like to see the City Council institute a new code that makes parking on grass, in a yard, illegal, and I would like to see CNU start taking a more active approach to the problems of off-campus housing. These actions would be a start toward a better relationship between college students and homeowners.

Sandra S. Meadows

Editor: It's unfair to paint all off-campus students with one brush, especially one that yields such an unattractive portrait. Plenty of students are great neighbors. But we agree that local governments and college administrations should work to protect neighborhoods from the ones who aren't.

WHO CAME FIRST?

Re: Thanksgiving's Day editorial. Why do you think the commonwealth of Virginia celebrated the 400th anniversary last year of the first English settlers' arrival at Jamestown in 1607? What did the author have in mind when written reference was made to the Kennebec River in Maine, instead of the James River in Virginia? Fortunately, it was correctly stated that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1619 at Berkeley Plantation, where that still occurs today. (American schoolchildren for decades have been taught too much about Pilgrims and the Mayflower, so none will learn American history accurately.) Your editorial message was a seasonal reminder that "we are all relatively abundantly blessed," and correct about survivors celebrating in 1621 with native Wampanoag people. Still, I nearly had sudden heart arrest over your suggestion that settlers in 1607 were in Maine. Editors, who should know better, are expected to apologize to every reader of the Daily Press as soon as possible!

Elsie M. Duval

Editor: We're with you on teaching history accurately. And we know how dearly some people hold these "Virginia priorities." (That's why we were careful to highlight the Berkeley thanksgiving.) But Maine and the Kennebec are true. Here's a salient summary from a Library of Congress Web site: "August 9, 1607: English settlers led by Captain George Popham joined Abnaki Indians along Maine's Kennebec River for a harvest feast and prayer meeting. The colonists, living under the Plymouth Company charter, established Fort St. George around the same time as the founding of Virginia's Jamestown colony. Unlike Jamestown, however, this site was abandoned a year later." We thought we'd offer visitors something new - a 1607 thanksgiving far from home - rather than the usual Jamestown fare.